Exam 1: Ch 1-3 Flashcards
(69 cards)
Paradigm
Basic approaches that are asking different questions about people
Trait approach
How do people differ in their personalities, behavior, and the psychological processes behind them? The dominant approach right now
Biological approach
How can we understand the mind in terms so of the body, including the brain? Considers biochemistry, neuroanatomy, genetics, and evolution
Psychoanalytic approach
What internal conflicts are happening in the unconscious? Based on the writings of Freud
Phenomenological approach
Focuses on people’s conscious experience of the world. Emphases on experience, free will, and the meaning of life. Closely related to humanistic psychology and exstentialism
Humanistic approach
How conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes; finding meaning and the basis of happiness. Closely related to phenomenological approach and existentialism.
Cross-cultural approach
How the experience of reality might be different across cultures. Subsect of phenomenological approach
Learning and cognitive processes approach
How cognitive processes, including perception, memory, and thought are involved in learning. Learning is used here looking at how behavior changes as a result of learned associations, rewards, punishments, and other life experiences.
Classic behaviorism
Focuses on evoked behavior, i.e. how the environment molds us
Social learning
How observation, self-evaluation, and vicarious learning determine behavior
The goal of personality psychology
To explain the whole person in his or her daily environment
Behaviorism
Focuses on how behavior changes as a function of rewards and punishments
Funder’s First Law
Great strengths are usually great weaknesses and, and vice versa
Psychological triad
Thoughts, feelings, behaviors
Funder’s Third Law
“Something beats nothing, two times out of three”
Meaning: gather as many clues as possible and put them together
S-Data
Self-judgments and Self-Reports. Usually in the form of questionnaires or surveys. High face validity.
Advantages: Large amount of info, access the thought, feelings, and intentions. Definitional truth (like self-esteem). Causal force (creates reality, can be thought of as self-efficacy). Simple and easy
Disadvantages: Bias, error, too simple and easy
Self-verification
The phenomenon that people work hard to bring others to treat the, in a manner that confirms their self-conception
Fish and water effect
Fish do not realize that they are wet. This can be applied to humans and serves as a disadvantage of S-data in that people may fail to realize traits of themselves if it is simply now part of their “nature.”
I-data
Data about someone from informants
Advantages: Lots of info, real-world basis. Considers common sense by taking context into account. Definitional truth (ex: likeable). Causal force (reputation affect opportunities and expectancies, expectancy affects/behavioral confirmation)
Disadvantages: Limited behavioral information, lack of access to private experience, error (more likely to remember behaviors that are extreme, unusual, or emotionally arousing), bias (letter of recommendation effect, prejudices and stereotypes)
L-Data
Life outcomes - Verifiable, concrete, real-life facts that may hold psychological significance. The “residue” of personality (how someone has affected the world)
Advantages: Not prone to biases like S and I, objective and verifiable, psychological relevance
Disadvantages: Multidetermination (outcomes have many causes)
B-Data
Behavior data: Observations of daily life (natural) or in a lab (experimental), can be from certain kinds of personality tests
Advantages: Range of contexts, appearance of objectivity
Disadvantages: Difficult and expensive, uncertain interpretation
Funder’s Second Law
There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues and clues are always ambiguous
Physiological measures are an example of __-Data
B-data because HR, blood pressure, etc. are all things that a patient “does”
Natural B-Data
The ideal way to collect B data would be to set up surveillance cameras and observe subjects without them knowing…can be unethical. Alternatives include diary and experience-sampling methods
